Neutral Municipality

The Neutral Municipality (Portuguese: Município Neutro), more formally known in the imperial era as the Neutral Municipality of the Court (Portuguese: Município Neutro da Corte), about the Imperial Court, was an administrative unit created in the Empire of Brazil, that existed in the territory corresponding to the current location of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro between August 12, 1834 (when it was proclaimed the Additional Act to the Constitution of 1824) and November 15, 1889, when was proclaimed the republic in Brazil. It only officially ceased to exist with the promulgation of the 1891 Constitution. Under the republican constitution, this administrative unit became the Federal District in 1891, which was abolished and transformed into the state of Guanabara in 1960, and later, with the fusion of this with the state of Rio de Janeiro in 1975. History After the transfer of the Portuguese Court to the city of Rio de Janeiro, the captaincy remained directly administered by the royal government, in a status differentiated from the others, whose administrations were slightly more autonomous in relation to the central power. With the independence of Brazil, a greater administrative autonomy that was aspired by its elite could not be reached as in the other captaincies, now transformed into provinces, since the minister of the Kingdom, a position that was practically a substitute for the one of Viceroy, was entrusted with its Rio administration. Allied to this was that the city of Rio de Janeiro remained as the capital of the empire of Brazil, which caused the minister to administer the whole province using "warnings", which he directed to the Municipal chambers of cities which, at that time, were growing at a rapid pace due to the expansion and strengthening of coffee plantations in the Paraíba Valley, which already surpassed the strength of sugarcane plantations in the North Fluminense region.